


sometimes the dreamers finally wake up

by magesamell



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers, post-episode: Syren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 19:04:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14551359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magesamell/pseuds/magesamell
Summary: "Four days ago a mermaid flooded Paris and an ancient guardian introduced himself to his father as a substitute Chinese tutor. He had thought that would be the end of it."Ladybug tells Chat Noir all of her secrets.





	sometimes the dreamers finally wake up

**Author's Note:**

> me, holding the squirt gun emoji to thomas astruc's head: let marinette tell her partner what the fuck is going on

Ladybug arrives at the next patrol, with, of all things, a notebook.

“What’s that?” he asks her in lieu of a hello. She doesn’t pay him much mind, instead sits across from him on the rooftop, tucking her legs underneath her.

“It’s my physics notebook,” Ladybug answers, and something about the way her voice turns at the end makes him suspicious. She starts thumbing through the pages quickly in obvious distraction.

“If you need to study, we can do this another time–” He’s stopped by a gloved finger against his lips.

“What did Master Fu tell you? Exactly?” She retracts her finger and resumes her search, After a moment the Ladybug finds her page, pulls a ballpoint pen out of the notebook spiral, clicks it open and looks up at him expectantly.

Chat Noir chuckles, not quite sure what is happening. “I didn’t know there would be a pop quiz.” Four days ago a mermaid flooded Paris and an ancient guardian introduced himself to his father as a substitute Chinese tutor. He had thought that would be the end of it.

Ladybug closes her eyes at his brush-off: a look he recognizes as obvious irritation. “I’m not quizzing you,” she says, and he realizes this is probably the most serious he’s ever seen her. “I made a mistake. I told myself it was okay because I was following a guardian’s instructions, but I was wrong. It’s just – we were alone for months and months, and now there was an adult?”

Ladybug glances at him sheepishly. “It was comforting. To not be the one in charge, I guess. Anyway.” She taps her pen against the notebook. “What’d he say?”

“Well, he explained he was a guardian. He keeps the miraculouses. There used to be more guardians, but he made a mistake and the temple was destroyed. That’s when the peacock and butterfly miraculouses were lost.” Ladybug nods along as he speaks, crossing out a number of somethings in her notebook. Chat Noir swallows. “Uh, the power-ups. What happens when the Ladybug and Chat Noir miraculouses are combined.”

“The wish,” Ladybug confirms.

“Yeah.”

Ladybug sighs heavily. “So he didn’t he tell you why he can make the power ups?”

“Uh, no?”

She sighs again, putting down her pen and letting the notebook lay flat on her lap. Chat Noir forces himself not to look down at what Ladybug had written.

“Okay,” Ladybug says softy. “Okay.” Then she looks up at him, soft and serious. “Master Fu can mix the power up potion because I gave him the grimoire. I uh, stole it from Adrien Agreste.”

Chat Noir blinks. “You stole–”

“Gabriel Agreste’s son. I saw him with this book that had pictures of super heroes in it. Miraculous holders. Ladybug and Chat Noir, but others too.”

“Like Volpina.”

“No, she was a fake. Like Rena Rouge.” Ladybug smiles gently. “So uh, I saw Adrien with the book and my kwami insisted she look at it. So I took it and then Tikki – my kwami – said she couldn’t read it, we had to go see a guardian. And that’s how I met Master Fu the second time.”

“So–”

“There’s more. Let me just – tell you everything, okay?”

She meets his gaze briefly, the radioactive blue of her eyes shocking him, before glancing away again.

“Okay,” he says.

Her mouth turns, but before he can call it a smile or a grimace, Ladybug begins again.

“Master Fu said that he was sure that whoever possessed the grimoire must also have the butterfly and peacock miraculouses.”

“You mean Papillion.”

“Yes. So I investigated, and it turned out the book wasn’t Adrien’s, it was his father’s.”

“That’s why you thought Papillion was Gabriel Agreste.”

“Yes,” Ladybug says, “And–”

“He wasn’t,” Chat Noir blurts before he can stop himself. “He was akumatized. He can’t be Papillion.”

“I know that,” Ladybug says slowly, her chin tilting curiously. “That’s why I gave the grimoire back to Mr. Agreste. After Master Fu took pictures of the text with his phone, so – you know – so we could keep using it.” Ladybug consults her notebook. “Then _Mr. Agreste_ told me he found it when he was abroad with his wife. So that’s all I know about the book. Anyway, next–”

“His wife?” The question makes Ladybug eye him again, and Chat chastises himself silently. At this rate he might as well be spelling out his identity for her. He wasn’t so sure anymore that revelation would be a happy one.

“I don’t know much about her,” Ladybug says. “She’s not in the picture anymore.”

“Right,” he says mechanically. Useless. Stupid to think Ladybug would know anything about–

“So then – right, the Sapotis, Master Fu let me choose a hero to help us. And I chose the fox – mostly, because I was curious what the real fox miraculous holder would look like. And um, I chose someone I trust. I really can’t tell you her identity.”

“That’s okay.”

She smiles, obviously relieved. And then turns back to her list, silently mouthing through her points.

“That brings us up to this week. After – you know…”

When he blew up in her face about hiding things. Yeah, he remembers.

“I asked Master Fu when – he would tell you everything he told me. And he said”– Ladybug puts on a ridiculous and unconvincing old man voice–“‘when the time is right!’ Which – whatever. Stupid. So I helped him figure out the aqua transformation potion – and uh,” Ladybug scans her list. “That’s everything.”

He opens his mouth to speak, but she interrupts him, again. “Oh! All of the potions require a ‘tear of joy,’ which we got the first time because I told Master Fu some honestly, really terrible jokes.”

Chat can’t help the grin spreading across his face. “Were they _my_ jokes?” He pokes her shoulder with one claw.

Ladybug fixes him with a deadly look. “Yeah, they were terrible. That’s why he _cried_.”

Chat throws back his head and laughs. When he tips his head forward again, he’s struck still by the expression on Ladybug’s face. In the low, ambient light of the nighttime city she appears equal parts fond and...sad.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. Master Fu was so adamant I had to keep everything a secret. But – I _didn’t_ trust him. Not completely. I didn’t tell him I thought the book was Adrien’s until after I found out it was actually Mr. Agreste’s. He even –” Ladybug laughs, but it comes out brittle and bitter. “He told me: ‘if we want to be stronger than Papillion, we have to trust each other.’”

Her dark eyes catch his in the moonlight, and she captures one of his hands in hers. “I should had never let him tell me what to do. Not when it came – to you know. Y–us, I guess. That’s – between you and me.”

Before he can react, she turns back to the notebook and reads up and down her list again. He guesses she just means to distract herself – but then he watches her eyes catch something near the top of the list. And Ladybug lets go of his hand.

“Also,” she says too-nonchalantly, her voice just barely wavering. “Last Valentine’s Day I kissed you to release you from Dark Cupid’s control.”

He laughs again, feeling warm. “Yeah, I, uh, read the blogs after Nadja’s episode aired. The fans uh – they’re so obsessed, you know – they figured out it was last February.”

Ladybug murmurs noncommitally, still refusing to look at him.

“Was it everything you ever dreamed?”

Her mouth turns again, and that’s definitely a smile. Chat Noir grins.

“Well, I can’t say, really,” she says airily. “I was mostly focused on avoiding your Cataclysm.”

He tries to process that, all of its implications, but before he can she’s laughing and taking his hands again.

They grin stupidly at each other for several moments.

Ladybug blinks at him, her smile falling rapidly as her expression grows anxious. “You know I do trust you, right? More than anyone. It’s been – a nightmare keeping this from you. I hate – I hated it.”

Chat nods, staring at her grip on his hands. He wriggles free, just enough to take ahold of hers, bring them to his lips.

“I know, Buginette.” He gazes at her, his lips on her fingers. And he kisses her.

Ladybug blinks twice, and withdraws her hands, puts them in her lap. Chat lets her go, relishes the softness of her gaze.

“I do have a question for you,” he says at length.

“Anything,” she answers.

“Do you know Adrien Agreste? Outside of the costume?”

He’s still not sure he wants to know, but he has to, he has to, he has to know like he had to know if his father really was Papillion.

“Uh, yeah, I do.” He hears the confusion in her voice. “Why, do you?”

Chat smirks, remembers her wide-eyed terror when Volpina dangled an illusion off the Eiffel Tower. He pokes her shoulder again. “Yeah, me too. Fancy that.”

“Oh,” she says, turning towards the cityscape. He shifts with her, lets his feet dangle off their rooftop.

They sit for several minutes more before officially starting patrol, and at the end of the evening he has to remind her to pick up the notebook before she leaves for home.

Chat Noir watches her swing away, and, as he does many nights, indulges in wondering where exactly she swings off to. He knows now: she’s closer to him than he ever thought possible.

**Author's Note:**

> alt title: welcome to season 2 recap with magesamell
> 
> also, i have more fic in the pipeline! i thought i was gonna post it when finals were over but uh syren really may motivate me to do it right dang now!!!


End file.
